Love, Sex, and Secrets

My parents’ letters: August 1, 1952 – April 20, 1953

An excerpt from my forthcoming book: The Great Before and Not So Great After

Is there a better time than now to talk about love? How its healing, comforting powers can keep us strong during challenges of seismic proportions? I’m thinking about my parents. A month after their marriage they were forced to separate for nearly a year, from August 1, 1952 to April 24, 1953.  In more than 600 letters they left behind, love was a flame they kept burning day and night in words, poems, and imagined sex. Reading the correspondence was like pulling back the covers on their bed, finding secrets, mysteries and details about their lovemaking that made me deeply embarrassed and feeling guilty for trespassing. As hard as it is, I have my reasons. 

Their first encounter was sometime in the spring of 1949. They were both working at Gallagher, a hospital in D.C, Louise as a Gray Lady and Ekrem as a young resident at the George Washington University Medical School. A friend pointed out the handsome Turkish doctor. Apparently, he had a reputation with the ladies.

Ekrem was sitting at a table in the cafeteria, peeling green grapes. Louise was equally appalled and attracted. The attracted part won out. Below are photos of them at Beverly Beach, Maryland, dated 1949. Their body language clearly shows they were lovers.

In telling me the story of how they met, my mother said she liked him but there was no way she was going to end up like his other conquests and sully her reputation. So how did they come to be lovers when their wedding did not take place until July 20, 1952?

They were already married. I had a suspicion from references in their letters to an anniversary being four years prior to their wedding date but had no proof. In one of her letters dated March 23, 1953, the truth was revealed. Louise writes to Ekrem about playing bridge with her girlfriends, Minkey and Eleanor, and they were talking about sex: 

Minkey had her little sex book out because Eleanor wanted to take it home. They were discussing frequency and the general concensus was two times a week was enough. I said I didn’t think so. Eleanor said, “Remember dear you are just a bride, wait until you’ve been married for 2 years.” Really Ekrem, it was so funny. I wanted to laugh and say I’m really married four years and I still think twice a week isn’t enough. There must be something wrong with us Ekrem to have been together all this time and still enjoy our sex life. Just a few more weeks and we shall bring the stars down.

But why was she writing him about bringing down the stars? At the time, she hadn’t seen her beloved for eight months. Ekrem was gone.  

After they were married, they were well aware he needed to return to Turkey to take his medical school boards and be conscripted into the Turkish army. No problem. Their lives would happily continue in Turkey, not D.C. They packed up the wedding gifts, all their clothes, bought a dishwasher and shipped everything to Ankara, where they would live in a house that had belonged to his mother. Ekrem left first, on August 1, 1952, to get everything ready. On Wednesday, August 28, he wired her airline tickets. The next day he sent her a cable telling her not to come. Big problem.

It was illegal for anyone in the Turkish army to be married to a foreigner. Ekrem had kept this fact to himself, convinced he’d make things work as he always did. But he had no power to change the laws or the mind of his obdurate father. In a harshly written letter, his father tells Ekrem that Louise’s presence would risk Ekrem’s status as an officer and he’d be forced to serve as a private with no benefits or privileges and serve two years instead of ten months. If she came, he adds, he’d withhold any financial support. Ekrem was devasted. He writers to her that he was ready to give up everything, his medical degree, citizenship and family honor and return to the U.S.

Aug. 30. Yesterday and last night were my most miserable hours. I cried. I talked to you as (if) you were with me. I knocked my head to walls. I could kill myself. How crazy I was leaving you and U.S. But I made mistake and I have to pay. How blind I was coming here. I immediately decided to return. My love for you is above everything, above this country, above anything, anybody.

Louise writes back and is adamant he stay, fulfill his duty and not jeopardize their future, either in Turkey or the U.S. He agrees but in an act of defiance, clearly against his father, sends Louise a ticket anyway. In September she comes for a visit in September but returns a few weeks later. Their options were limited. A forced separation ensued. Heartache, longing, mistrust, doubts, but mostly love poured out in letter after letter.

Like many lovers, they had a secret code and special terms of endearment, mostly in Turkish. Like humsi kiz, which means little bug, as well as nicknames (mostly his) for favorite parts of her body. In one of his first letters he writes, “Don’t be blue, when I hold you in my arms in Istanbul, all troubles will be over. And li, li, li.” Each letter closed with a multitude of mysterious “li’s.” I searched for a definition but found none. This was a private lexicon that referred to a world of intimacy beyond translation. In his letter of February 8, 1952:

My angel, half of the life is sex and desire, it’s not only li/le, there is the desire and sex of the skin of the hands of the eyes. To hold you in bed, to touch you to kiss your skin your breast on mine, is half of our life, our love. To hold you without anything on you is such a thing no letter no picture no dram can takes its place. When we get physically tired of sex the other half of our life makes everything complete. To sit side by side drink and listen music hand in hand relaxing our tired muscles drunk with heavenly fatigue.

Ekrem was the more romantic and excelled in literary lovemaking:   

Let me kiss the pretties before you go to sleep tonight, let me kiss the corners of your arms, they are so soft, like Turkish Delight, more sweeter. Let me smell your skin and take you in my arms.

Last night you were with me and Li Li, I had to change in the morning! Why don’t you come every night to me so I can kiss you. I love you my angel. My bride, my beautiful wife. I kiss your lips, beautiful little nipples millions of times.

You are my life, the light of my eyes, the color of my soul, my gift from the heavens.

Louise, on the other hand, was more pragmatic, writing about the day to day challenges of living with her grumpy mother and never having enough money. But she never failed to tell him how much she loved him:

I think of you with every breath I take and long for the comfort of your arms.

I love you darling. I miss you. I kiss your eyes and each night when I go to bed I call to you and wonder if you can hear me. I pray the angels watch over you for me.

When I come home we will stay in bed for a week – your le starved wife.

Are you blushing yet? The rest of their letters are even more embarrassing and painful, and not just because of sex. I am putting myself through this for a reason. My life is inextricably tied to theirs, their origins are mine, as are the not-so-great times too. They are the reason I am and there is so much I need to know. My journey has just begun.

This month we celebrate their birthdays: Louise on the 1st and Ekrem on the 20th. I will offer a toast toward the heavens where I hope they are sitting, sipping cocktails, holding hands in the dark. I will leave you with one of Ekrem’s poems:

To the girl of my dreams, I love you.

To the one like spring flowers.

Like in the clouds two lovers.

How heavenly it seems I love you.

 You will be my sun coming from West.

April it will be the month of best.

Of our lives, of our missings

Stars will be blinking for our kissings.

To the girl of my dreams, I love you

Come to put your lips on mine

Come to my skies again to shine

To give life to my dreams, I love you.

I hope you’ll be inspired to pick up the pen and send someone you hold dear – romantic or otherwise! – words of love. They will last a lifetime and beyond.

Note: you can read about their passing in my essay, Saying Goodbye, published by Existere Journal, (link)